Page 90 - June 2015

KURTIS COADY
by John Moorehouse
“I’m very fortunate to have some of the greatest friends I’ve ever had in my life, and I met them through Quarter Horse racing.”
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longtime shutterbug and horse-racing fanatic, who combined the two through his work with Coady Photography—a long-running family business that has become a staple at many tracks. In fact, Kurtis is part of the third generation of Coadys to work in the business. That keeps him plenty busy, but he graciously took some time to tell Speedhorse more about himself.
Q: Where were you born?
A: Because of horse racing, my parents are from Arizona, but me and my twin brother, my older brother and my younger brother were all born in Canada during the summer months of racing.
Q: What are your hobbies?
Primarily, with me and my brothers, our passion is just photography. So, it’s really also our hobby. But, the three of us are also into motorcycles and water skiing.
Q: What is your favorite movie?
Anything horse racing-related. I am a huge fan of the movie Secretariat.
Q: Give an interesting fact about your family/ parents/grandparents/greats...
A: Most notably, just the fact we’ve been in business for 50 years. We started in 1962. I think the greatest fact about our ‘family’ is that our employees are some of the greatest photographers in the country. We are strict on who we hire, but everybody who works for us is a part of the family.
Q: Do you have a nickname and, if so, what is it and how did it come about?
A: You know what, I do not have a nickname.
Q: What is the strangest personality quirk you have ever seen in a horse?
A: It’s got to be Zenyatta. That horse had so much charisma and personality. I don’t think there’s a person in the country who would argue that she wasn’t the most animated, pleasant horse to be around.
Q: If you were not in the horse racing business, what job would you like to have?
A: If I wasn’t in horse racing photography, there are two things I would like to do. I always wanted to be a general manager of a racetrack, a horseracing track. And, I always wanted to shoot for National Geographic.
Q: What is your favorite thing about living where you live?
A: I just recently moved to Louisville and it is the horse capital of the world, along with Lexington,
and we do the photography at Keeneland. I moved
to Louisville to be more centralized, so I’m closer to our other tracks. We don’t do Churchill, but we do the other tracks in Kentucky. I would just have to say that, because I’m around the top echelon of everyone in horse racing out here, and around the best horses in the world, I don’t think there’s a better place you could live.
Q: If you could vacation anywhere on the planet, where would it be & what would you do there? A: Sport fishing. I love to go fishing in the (Florida) Keys or just anywhere in the world. I want to catch different species of fish. Luckily for me, my twin brother and my older brother are the same way. The three of us like to get away and
try something new. Just recently I went fishing in Costa Rica.
e’s seen some of the finest horses and jock- eys in America, and done so mostly through
the eye of a camera lens. Kurtis Coady is a
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SPEEDHORSE, June 2015
THE LIGHTER SIDE